ABSTRACT

The first time that American women formally demanded the right to vote was at the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights in 1848. More than 70 years would pass before the nation granted that demand, and racial discrimination at the state level would force most southern black women to wait even longer, until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Besides race prejudice, a major reason for the long delay was the idea (held by many women as well as men) that politics did not fit the female character. Some believed women were too dependent on men to cast an independent vote; others thought their purity would be sullied by the rough-and-tumble of politics.